Retro Review : Street Fighter II

Ok before I do the retro review, let me apologise for not updating over the last couple of weeks like normal but it's Halo Reach Beta's fault! But now it's over so until something else happens to bugger everything up again, I'll be keeping to routine. Also if I am able to I'll get a review of Super Street Fighter IV (which is my inspiration for this retro review) done by around Thursday. Anyway let's get back to work and get to the retro reviews.

Ah! Remember the days when arcades existed? Well if your under 20 then you probably don't, but if you are older then this is probably where thousands of your allowance dollars went. Street Fighter II was so popular it was eventually released on home consoles and introduced people like me to the fighting game genre.

Street Fighter II, the first of the many... many... many... many incarnations of this game featured 8 playable character in the first version and 12 in total. I'd list them but I'm sure everyone knows by now... oh the heck with it I'll list them. There's Ryu, Ken, Sagat, E. Honda, Chun Li, Blanka, Zangief, Guile, M. Bison, Dhalsim, Vega and Balrog. The controls were simple and even though there were six attack button the moves weren't that difficult to learn, but were difficult to master. Each character also has different moves other then Ryu and Ken who were essentially clones of each other and unfortunately unlike Super Street Fighter IV there is a serious balance issue which even skill couldn't help completely. One thing I hated about the original was the speed (which was fixed in one of the other incarnations) which wasn't very fast and was a bit of a pain to get used to. Also the AI was very challenging because of the slow speed but that's also what made it such a good game at the same time. Each new incarnation of Street Fighter II added something new. First was all 12 characters playable, then extra speed, and then extra character and super moves. If your thinking that each addition was pointless then your wrong! One thing Capcom is good at is improving a game with each edition and they did. Each version of Street Fighter II was improved in different ways to eventually create the definitive version Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which you can download on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in a re-skinned HD version with online multiplayer... that or get Super Street Fighter IV, either way you can't go wrong!

Street Fighter II is pretty much the father of the fighting game genre and every Street Fighter that followed was a great edition to the Street Fighter family. I love Street Fighter games and I've honestly have never met a proper fighting game fan who didn't like Street Fighter. If you've never played a Street Fighter game then you really need to because if your gonna play a fighting game, you should play the best.